Amma's Anniversary

Tomorrow is that dreaded day when exactly one year ago, we woke up to a new ugly reality. A day when literally in a few minutes, a seismic shift altered our lives forever.

It was today, 25th May, that Amma shared her last living moments with all of us. These last few days, my chitti's (mother’s younger sister) my periamma (mom’s older sister), Appa and I – all of us who beheld Amma those last few days and hours have spent reliving her last few moments: This day last year. What were we doing? ‘This moment, were we not returning from the temple trip?’ ‘She said that, didn’t she?’ ‘We ate that yummy curd rice you had packed’ ‘Why did she agree to return when you asked her to?’ The questions without answers, the moments etched in stone, the sorrow, the regret, - all of it lived dozens of times through the year in over a dozen hearts and minds, back to haunt us again today, and maybe again this day next year, and the year after…

Death is so matter of fact – everything born must die – nobody prepares you for how it shapes you when a loved one dies. This is one area we have no training in. There are classes on how to give birth, how to feed your baby, how to parent, how to deal with your child, how to manage your spouse, how to this, how to that. But nobody trains you on how to deal with life after the death of a loved one. What should you do when you see your rock, your father, break down and cry like a baby? How do you decide who gets your mother’s most prized possessions? The little décor items she picked out with so much love – invaluable to her, but worthless to someone else? Do you throw or keep her chappals she left behind in your house? Her store of sarees – who do you give them to? How do you handle your own helplessness, when you see your surviving parent wrapped in loneliness? Most of all, nobody prepares you for the seismic shift in your own mind, in your priorities, in how you suddenly view your own life and your choices. Nobody tells you that your journey from being a child to becoming the adult is now finally complete, and that, now, in many ways, your generation has reached the front of the queue.

When blood supply to a part of our body gets blocked, a web of other smaller blood vessels emerges to take its place. That web of love is what we are slowly learning to build: new connections forged over old relationships, old connections reimagined, strengthened, to fill the giant void left by that queen-sized one.: Father to daughter, brother to sister, Aunt to niece, brother in law – sister in law. Sister to sister. Daughter-in law – father –in law, granddaughter to grandfather. All connections to help us heal, to cope, to carry on, to somehow move on.

This last year has also been a series of firsts: the first time your dad cooked you a meal for many days in a row, the first time you cooked him one many days in a row. The first time your dad fought with the maid, the first time you helped your dad manage their home. The first birthday you didn’t get a call from her first thing in the morning, the first new year you brought in without wishing her at midnight. The first year your dad celebrated his wedding anniversary alone, the first year your aunt didn’t get a saree on her special day. The first time ma didn’t make gajar halwa on your brother’s birthday, the first Diwali she didn’t make your favorite ‘omapudi’ The first time you didn’t instantly know when something had happened in the extended family, the first time you attended a family function on her behalf. That f first time you picked up the phone to call her, but then cut the call, that first time you cooked her signature dish without calling her first. And with each first, you learning, accepting, that this is not a just another horrible dream you will eventually wake up from.

They say Time heals, and heal it has, even if it should be doing a better job. How much longer for the ache to vanish, Time? It’s been a year, a year already. And somehow her looming absence, rankles still.